


Downstream

by GlitterGluwu



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Depression, Dimigard Week (Fire Emblem), F/M, Grief/Mourning, Intercrural Sex, Shower Sex, Smut and Angst, Step-Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:54:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27184112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlitterGluwu/pseuds/GlitterGluwu
Summary: It was one of his bad days.If she was really honest with herself, it had been an entire bad week.Dimitri had not showered in days, and while she had learned that there was no simple way to trick him out of his depressive episodes, she had learned in turn that there were several simple ways to make them easier.---Dimitri and Edelgard each have their own ways of dealing with the harder days.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Edelgard von Hresvelg
Comments: 16
Kudos: 66
Collections: Dimigard Week





	Downstream

**Author's Note:**

> HEEEEEEEY
> 
> It's finally here c: I've honestly been looking forward to Dimigard week since it was announced, and I basically spent the whole month prepping for it! I'm so glad to finally have a chance to share. (Though it almost didn't happen! Life has been Weird to me lately.)
> 
> Please check out the event's [Twitter page](https://twitter.com/dimigardweek) to see all the incredible art and fic being created for this event!!!! I'm PSYCHED to see even more!!!!! (And to share some more, myself!) For all of my offerings - I have another fic, a drawing, several ficlets AND a playlist planned - you should visit my [Twitter](https://twitter.com/glittergluwu) too.
> 
> Thanks again, and happy reading!

It was one of his bad days.

If she was really honest with herself, it had been an entire bad _week._

She had learned well enough over time that her tendency toward logic, toward questioning the source of the bad feeling, did little to help Dimitri when he was at his worst. She was the sort who needed an explanation for everything; he was the sort who only became more miserable by trying to find rationality in irrational feelings. In the end, maybe the result was kinder for him than it was for her - Edelgard was a master of numbness by suppression, of logic-ing herself right out of feeling at all. She half wondered whether she would ever pause to let herself _process_ beyond just talking herself out of her own pain if it weren’t for him.

But this wasn’t about her. Dimitri had not showered in days, and while she had learned that there was no simple way to trick him out of his depressive episodes, she had learned in turn that there were several simple ways to make them easier.

She turned the water on and turned away, stripped, and then departed for the bedroom, stepping quick and light despite knowing that they were the only ones in the house and had indeed been for a good few years now. He looked up as she flitted to her dresser.

“I forgot my towel,” she chuckled sheepishly, scooping up a fresh one - one of their biggest and fluffiest, ostensibly made to accommodate a larger figure than her own - and skipped back out. She paused long enough to hear him sigh and push himself listlessly out of bed before rushing back to the shower.

She’d barely hung the towel on the rack and stepped in before he nudged the door open. “You could bear to be a little more direct,” he said over the sound of the faucet. It was nice and warm from her having left it on. “It’s hardly a mystery to me why you do this, by now.”

Edelgard sucked her lips between her teeth; he was right, but she’d supposed their unspoken understanding would remain unspoken. She peeked around the curtain to see him undressing, silently morose, and swallowed.

“I don’t mean to manipulate you. I just wanted to make it a little more fun.” She stepped aside to let him in when he finished. “You never take it particularly well when I’m any more direct than this, anyway.”

Dimitri seemed to pout for another moment more, then, all at once, deflated. “You’re right,” he murmured. He stood somberly in front of her, stony-faced, and she puzzled for a moment.

“Would you like me to do your hair?” she offered, finally, and he was quiet. He shook his head, then beckoned her closer; she went obediently to his chest, feeling his muscles stretch as he reached around her for her shampoo, thinking about the sharp jut of his ribs against her fingertips. He hadn’t quite been _muscular_ for a good long time, but thin as he was she could still feel every movement, every ripple.

“I need to take better care of you,” she mumbled, tracing his sternum, and he paused, letting the unfortunate sound of her almost-empty shampoo bottle punctuate his mental process.

“That isn’t your job,” he said finally, softly. Familiar fingers worked their way through her hair. “If anything, I need to take better care of _you.”_

“You’re not -”

Lips met her forehead. He spoke into it, rumbling down through her like the stream of water hitting her lower back, flowing down her legs. “They were your parents, too,” he told her.

She curled her hands into little fists against his skin. “Perhaps we could skip ahead to the part where I suck your dick,” she suggested, not _exactly_ meaning to distract him, but knowing it would work nonetheless; that knowledge was confirmed by the muted twitch of his cock against her lower stomach. “You could even carry on shampooing me while I did it. It’s just efficiency.”

He didn’t reply; for the first time, she lifted her gaze past his arms, past the bony jut of his shoulder, and met his eye. He seemed absorbed in his task, in working shampoo through her long hair.

Dimitri had always liked her hair. Even when their parents had first been married, he’d liked to touch it; Edelgard figured it was because he hadn’t had siblings before her, never had a girl around so that he could admire long hair up close. If he’d asked Ingrid, he’d likely have lost a few fingers - and at one point, she would have reacted the same.

But Dimitri had nimbler fingers than most, and Edelgard had always loved that about him. Every gentle head massage, every time he quietly asked to braid it back for her, was a treat for her senses, a flashback to that first night they’d all felt like a family - when her mother had taught Dimitri how to braid long hair with her as their guinea pig while Lambert was a room away baking cookies.

Even now, cuddled up against Dimitri’s rank-smelling skin, she swore she could smell brown sugar wafting under the door, hear her mother reminding him to be gentle, feel the sting of their loss anew. He coaxed apart a knot with so much finesse she hardly noticed and she closed her eyes, drawing in the sensation with a slow, sleeplike inhale.

It wasn’t a sexual touch - at least, it wasn’t intended that way. But something in all this did produce a slow burn between her thighs, perhaps because he touched her hair in much the same way as he touched the rest of her: firm enough to soothe the ache but so _delicately,_ too.

Whether or not Dimitri noticed, he didn’t say. He seemed perfectly satisfied with working shampoo over her scalp, conditioning the ends, and then, because it seemed he was that much in need of tactile comfort, braiding back her hair. The water hitting her back was cooling now, but Edelgard found she didn’t mind; there was safety in his arms, a heavy sort of feeling she didn’t often feel in the shower. She might have napped, and she might have rubbed herself off on his thigh, but instead she lingered in that in-between state of arousal and fatigue that made her feel so content.

“I don’t quite want to be done,” Dimitri rumbled, startling her out of her reverie. She tilted her head back again, watching him pout as he rounded off her second braid. She didn’t have any hair ties with her, but the water adhered the braids together. “I feel more useful than I have in days.”

Edelgard puzzled over the statement. “You could soap me down, I suppose.” That seemed to reignite the minute interest Dimitri’s cock had expressed earlier, force just the faintest bloom of a blush onto his cheeks. It stirred something in her; the arousal was winning out over the weariness, if only just, as Dimitri nodded his assent and reached past her for her body wash and her loofah.

She waited with eager anticipation as he repeated all the steps, the squirting sound less abrasive this time but the gentle foaming all the more torturous; at last he touched down between her shoulders, working in soothing circles down her back, though she wasn’t at all soothed. It took a few sweeps before he seemed satisfied - much longer than she would ever have bothered washing her own back - before he hesitated just above her butt. He eventually swept it over either cheek, then parted them -

“Yes,” she whispered. It was hardly what she needed, but it was a good start.

“Hm?” came his reply. He scrubbed her a little bit there, then removed the loofah and didn’t touch her for too long; the change in the tempo of water hitting the floor told her that he was rinsing the loofah, and she was none too pleased.

“Dimitri,” she muttered, half-smothered into his chest. He just grunted.

He couldn’t _possibly_ be unaware.

“Touch me again,” she grumbled.

“I need more soap.”

“Not to _touch_ me.”

He laughed. It felt like the first time in days - she might have cried, if she weren’t so irate. “But El,” he said, and it was in that rare, playful tone that delighted her to no end, “You’re _filthy.”_

That dirty, rotten -

She had always loved when he manhandled her, and unfortunately, he was well aware of that. When he turned her around with little effort, her feet slipping with the water but held upright by his hands gripping her arms, she couldn’t help but shudder.

His feet were so large, compared to hers.

At last her loofah met her front, and he swiped it teasingly over either breast - and there was true _ecstasy_ just in the aesthetic of it, in how large his hand was compared to her tit, how her meager breasts bulged around the firm touch of his hand, bubbling over with soap and glistening with water. When he worked his way down her stomach, it was almost better - water was hitting her there, cold by now, contrasting the heat at her core, and the friction was good, the temperature was _good -_

“Goodness, El,” Dimitri purred, and he was all around her, holding her in huge, firm arms - “You truly are filthy.”

She cried as he dipped between her thighs, just rubbing atop her vulva but still, still - the heat that gathered hadn’t been quenched by the water, only heightened. It was like an itch that needed to be scratched, a chin that needed to be tilted back, eyelids that needed to be forced closed against her first orgasm.

Dimitri held her up as she shook apart, craning his neck to press featherlight kisses down the side of her face. She felt his hands on her like a sickening overwhelm as she came down, but a comforting brand as she recovered. She leaned back into him and pursed her lips.

“Filthy, am I?”

“Yes,” he said, craning his neck downward. He wasn’t kissing her so much as holding his face in parallel with hers, warming her temple and tickling it faintly with spoken breaths. “A veritable seductress, El. One for whom I could never express the full spectrum of my gratitude.”

A new kind of warmth bloomed inside her and she ducked her head in embarrassment. “It’s… self-serving. I needed to wash the sheets and -”

“Now, El,” Dimitri countered, wrapping his arms around her. “You’re as transparent now as you were when ‘forgetting’ your towel.”

She blinked.

She knew Dimitri’s nature well by now. His embrace wasn’t intended as a trap, the lingering cold of the shower stream not intended as torture, but - 

“We’d best get you cleaned up,” she mumbled, “before the water freezes us both.”

Silence fell like the stream of water still hitting her thighs. Edelgard shivered in spite of the steady warmth at her back, and when Dimitri curled his fingers against her stomach, his fingertips were as cold as the water itself.

“I know you didn’t take a day off just to take care of me,” he insisted.

She drew a shuddering breath.

“Perhaps not,” she said, “But if I don’t get moving, I’m going to turn into a chattering mess.”

That, finally, seemed to startle a laugh out of him. “In that case, don’t trouble yourself over me. I’ll meet you in bed,” he paused to kiss her head again, “and I promise that I will smell like roses.”

She flushed again. “I never said you _smelled.”_

He laughed again; the movement jostled her backside, a particular brand of warmth that braced her more effectively than any of the heat from before. “You’re more transparent than you’re willing to admit, El. Go, I insist.”

She did as she was told, bundling herself up in the towel she’d meant to share with him and listening to the disruptions in the sound patterns of the water hitting the floor of the shower as she went. She saw his shadow making quick work of rubbing shampoo into his hair before she turned away and headed back to their room.

Their _parents’_ room.

She huddled in the doorway for an agonizing moment, peering in, reading between the wrinkles of the sheets. She remembered receiving the call, then coming here to weep into the sheets, longing to be eleven again, dive-bombing their parents with Dimitri on Saint Seiros’s day and gleefully seeking her mother’s warmth beneath the covers.

Edelgard knew what day it was. She knew very well _why_ Dimitri had had a bad week.

Dimitri needed a towel - she should get him… a towel.

She took a faltering step toward the dresser, but inevitably swerved toward the bed instead. The tears weren’t gradual in their approach; no, all it took was one sob before it was all bubbling out of her eyes and nose and roiling in her throat, too. She dived, swaddling herself in her towel and laying atop the covers, burying her sniveling nose in them and battling Dimitri’s rank depression-scent to find _them._

They weren’t there, of course. It was all exactly the same as it had been for the last three - no, _four_ years. Where she wanted them, she only found him.

Dimitri’s hand landed on her shoulder before she properly registered that he’d re-entered the room; he tugged on her towel and she only strengthened her grip. He paused a moment, then retreated. She heard a drawer opening and the rustling of another towel.

And then he curled up behind her, letting her stay swaddled in her towel, just holding her and letting her cry it out. In a bitter, painful part of her heart, she couldn’t help but resent it; he didn’t suggest anything, didn’t try to speak on her terms. She had painstakingly learned all the best ways to comfort _him_ so that his wretched, self-centered pride wouldn’t be hurt when she told him it was time to pull himself together.

No, he only held her, kissed her, and forgave her.

“You’re still cold,” he whispered eventually. “Let me help you out of the towel, alright?”

She wanted to argue, or even put a voice to her spiteful thoughts. Instead, she quietly fought him - increased her death grip on the towel even as he gently pried it out of her hands, only pouting when he asked, “You wanted to wash the sheets, right? I don’t know whether I can go that far, but I can change them if you’d like.”

She stood and allowed it, cold irritation sitting uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach. Dimitri always meant well. This wasn’t fair.

It finally exorcised itself in the form of tears, too. She watched him round off the making of the bed - never as finessed as she did it, but serviceable for now - and ducked her head as more tears silently migrated down her cheeks.

He held the quilt up for her, and she slid in. He accompanied her, spooned her with the whole of his huge, hot body, and she sobbed again, properly, coming apart at last in his broad hands.

“I owe you my life, El,” he said. “I hope you know that.”

That sparked more irritation. “So _live it,”_ she said before she could resist. “I’m not your mother, Dimitri.”

“You’re not. I’m sorry.”

“I’m always -”

“I know.”

“It’s not _fair.”_

“No, it isn’t.”

There was palpable pain in his voice, and she knew very well why. Of course she knew he didn’t _want_ to be depressed, but - what was he supposed to say? What would make her feel better?

“I can’t ever -” she wept - “I can’t ever - break down, or have a bad week. Or you’ll -”

“I won’t.”

“It’s not fair.”

“I swear to you,” Dimitri interrupted, stroking her arm, “I won’t. I didn’t understand then, El. I thought their passing meant losing you as my _family.”_

“Never.”

“And I know that now,” he breathed into her. “I know that all those nights of fooling around under the sheets meant as much to you as they did to me, whether either of us can put it to words or not. I know now that… that you owe your life to me, too.”

These tears were kinder. They overwhelmed her capacity for speech, tore out of her throat with a force powerful enough to expel all that irritation, all that resentment. “I-if you had -” she tried, boiling over with it, “If I’d lost you, too -”

“You never will,” he promised.

She couldn’t speak anymore. She smothered her tears and snot into one of those freshly-changed pillowcases, wriggling back into Dimitri’s hold as much as she could. He cradled her as intimately as ever he had, and when she drew up the courage to glance into his eyes, they were visibly dewy.

“Do you remember, El?” he murmured, smiling gently. “Being teenagers and - and touching each other under the blankets? Hiding you in my bed because you were so much smaller?”

She swallowed down the phlegm in her throat and nodded. He pressed his nose into the side of her face and brushed one clinging hand lower; she startled, but when he went to retreat, she shook her head. It was strange, really - those incidental touches to her lower stomach, to her upper thigh. They felt so fresh, the way they had when they were so much younger.

“You were always so sensitive,” he whispered. “And I was always so paranoid. I miss you being the bad girl, El.”

She laughed low, feeling unfit for it in a distant sort of way. It seemed to embolden Dimitri, however, who went on; “Remember when this was enough for you?” He rubbed gently between her legs, making her gasp. “You were always biting off more than you could chew… wanting to do so much more than you were prepared for.”

He kissed the shell of her ear. “Sometimes, despite it all… I get the feeling that you haven’t changed, much.”

Her breath hitched, though not from pleasure. She swallowed again.

“Use your words, El,” Dimitri mumbled. “Tell me what you need.”

It was as if she were drowning in her own sorrow - literally. The post-nasal drip was miserable, lying on her side like this.

“Do you remember how - between my thighs,” she said at last, flinching at the roughness of her own voice. “Because we were too scared to go buy condoms?”

He chuckled, straight into her ear, and she was faintly relieved. “As if it were yesterday, El,” he said, grinding forward; the first buck of his hips just drove his cock between her asscheeks, but on the second she parted her thighs enough for him to slide into place. This was its own most satisfying pleasure, just feeling the intolerable heat of his cock aligned with her cunt; she felt a ghost of her own shivering from the first time they’d done this, overcome with the _closeness_ of it, the taboo of them doing this at all.

“Oh,” she inhaled, all quivering delight. He hummed into her temple as he kissed it, then thrust forward once again. She drew in a gasp, and he grasped her breast; that, too, she couldn’t help but laugh at.

“As if you’d ever - have had the courage to do that, when we were young,” she teased, and he huffed, only half indignant.

“Is it too cruel to say you didn’t have anything to grasp, back then?”

She squawked, in turn her own brand of mocking indignance. He shuddered with laughter, driving his cock between her thighs hard enough to produce a muted slap from their skin meeting. He kissed her again as he drove in, quietly assuring her that no love was lost for the teasing, as if it were in any way necessary.

“I’ve always loved this, whether or not I could say it,” he whispered hotly, “Feeling you - so _small,_ shaking in my arms.”

And she couldn’t say it back, not when she was as overwhelmed as she was - but she’d always loved this, too. He was so _big_ compared to her, encompassing her whole so effortlessly. She rubbed her thighs thoughtlessly together as he carried on thrusting, driving a guttural moan from his throat. She recalled how _vexed_ she’d been to discover that he was, in fact, less sensitive than her, way back when, and how much mental labor it had taken to understand that that was, above all else, a blessing.

“El,” he panted, squeezing her breasts, and she hiccuped. She was so _close,_ just needing one last, delicate _something_ to tip her into bliss, but goddess knew he’d always loved to cum _with_ her.

“Please,” she mouthed, hardly having the breath to verbalize it properly. He ducked his head, kissed her neck - but no, _no,_ that wasn’t it, it wasn’t -

“El,” he repeated, squeezing one nipple between two fingers, “I sh-should have - confessed sooner. I - the timing -”

He squeezed her other nipple, and that was enough. She whined high, bucking her hips, chasing that friction as far as she could follow it, and panted for a good few seconds more. Dimitri stroked her breasts with his thumbs, firmly, enough that she _felt_ them depressing her skin, and she sighed into it.

He playfully bit her cheek. “So selfish,” he teased. “Getting two before I so much as get one.”

She thought back, remembering Lambert’s famous cookies, and retorted, “I’ve always had a stronger sweet tooth, regardless.”

His laugh was a baffled one. He hadn’t quite followed her line of thinking - she’d explain when her brain un-scrambled itself. As things were, he pushed himself upward, bringing the blankets with him, and she whined at the rush of cool air hitting her newly-warmed body.

Dimitri kissed her with all the tenderness of her brother, all the heat of her lover, and all the love of both.

“Happy anniversary, El.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you've read this far, I'd absolutely delight in your comments!!!
> 
> [My Twitter](https://twitter.com/glittergluwu) | [My CuriousCat](https://curiouscat.qa/GlitterGlue)


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